1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an embossing system and more particularly to a solenoid driven embossing mechanism for embossing information onto a common credit card.
Automated embossing systems have found wide acceptance in the field. Two such systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. RE 27,809 to Drillick and U.S. Pat. No. 3,820,454 to Hencley et al and U. S. Pat. No. 3,820,455.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,271,012, 4,180,338 and 4,088,216 all show a system utilizing a pair of embossing heads in a card transport mechanism for rapidly positioning a card to receive characters from punch and die members carried by punch and die wheels. The characters are applied to various embossing locations on the surface of a card. The application of the embossing forces to the punch and die members is, in all of the systems shown in the patents listed above, by a motorized cam driven, continuously oscillating bail arm mechanism for mechanically driving the punch and die members. Such systems are mechanically complex and quite heavy because of the necessity of providing extremely strong mechanical structures for mechanically developing and coupling the embossing forces to the punch and die elements. Such prior art structures are not particularly helpful for use in simple and common lower volume applications where machines having reduced physical size and weight and lower cost are particularly necessary.